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nicolas already updated the situation with his latest posts anyway, reflecting the new findings about it.
But I felt that Michael's post was a good summary of what was done on the release, and since it also included the comparisons, it felt quite exhaustive to me.

"It's not what I remember, therefore it's wrong!" is the kind of knee-jerk attitude that's the absolute bane of my life, especially if I'm working on a project that's conscientiously trying to fix problems that have bedevilled a film for decades.

Almost as irritating is people who blithely say that the soundtrack is exactly the same as with previous releases, as if I hadn't spent hours cleaning it up manually on a per-thump and per-crackle basis. In some cases even the most cursory comparison would make this obvious, but these "reviewers" clearly don't expect anyone to challenge them.

Not to try and be the devil's advocate, but from my experience, it can be harder to review audio compared to video, because it can be a more diffuse impression that no direct tool can express. Even waveforms and spectrals can be delicate to analyse and not reveal a noticeable difference (or show something that actually isn't perceptible).

There a few things I can spot and describe by ear, and then confirm by a spectrum analysis, but other than this, I find it way more difficult to describe. Video, yeah, I can do screencaps, I can spot it's thick and sharpened like an old HD master, or fine and grainy like a new 4k resto from a 35mm OCN, but audio ? That's probably why we still routinely get extremely filtered things (eg the Ozu and Mizoguchi movies) nowadays and improvements have been less linear than for video.

And while we ("pros"/enthusiasts) did move mostly away from more contrasted/saturated is better, I definitely can understand people having a hard time diagnosing if it's track A that is too boomy or track B that is neutered.

(But then, of course, some are just poor at reviewing this)

Kino's Alphaville 4K is unfortunately not worth upgrading (he does mention in a follow up post that Marienbad appears to be fine).

Finch wrote: Wed Aug 28, 2024 7:10 pm Kino's Alphaville 4K is unfortunately not worth upgrading (he does mention in a follow up post that Marienbad appears to be fine).

Damn, I thought Alphaville was SDR just like the other French titles and sold my BD in anticipation of the UHD. Hopefully SC have their own master ready

nicolas wrote: Wed Aug 28, 2024 7:15 pm

Finch wrote: Wed Aug 28, 2024 7:10 pm Kino's Alphaville 4K is unfortunately not worth upgrading (he does mention in a follow up post that Marienbad appears to be fine).

Damn, I thought Alphaville was SDR just like the other French titles and sold my BD in anticipation of the UHD. Hopefully SC have their own master ready

I sold mine too - is it worse than the blu-ray? Are we expecting SC to put this out?

therewillbeblus wrote: Wed Aug 28, 2024 7:17 pm

nicolas wrote: Wed Aug 28, 2024 7:15 pm

Finch wrote: Wed Aug 28, 2024 7:10 pm Kino's Alphaville 4K is unfortunately not worth upgrading (he does mention in a follow up post that Marienbad appears to be fine).

Damn, I thought Alphaville was SDR just like the other French titles and sold my BD in anticipation of the UHD. Hopefully SC have their own master ready

I sold mine too - is it worse than the blu-ray? Are we expecting SC to put this out?

The UHD could be worse than the BD because of the difficulties in encoding they’re having with the HDR grade. What concerns me just as much is the mentioning of managed grain. I don’t think the “old” 4K master looked unnatural, so maybe this is indeed a brand new master from the ground up or a new restoration and HDR pass on the old 4K scan done by an incompetent party. We’ll see soon, unfortunately I pre-ordered this. I’ll compare the UHD with the included BD. SC seemingly go through their back catalogue step by step with even smaller titles like Alphaville hitting UHD, such as An Inspector Calls. Hopefully they have more Godard in the works in general but the two they already did are unfortunately botched. I just hope the BD inside the 4K is the old one and it’ll serve me fine again. ](*,)

Finch wrote: Wed Aug 28, 2024 7:10 pm Kino's Alphaville 4K is unfortunately not worth upgrading (he does mention in a follow up post that Marienbad appears to be fine).

I've only looked at it for a few minutes so far.
But it's a weird master - devoid of a lot of actual detail it could have had (obviously degrained), but then overlaid with a fine layer of grain that often moves clumped together, as if on a different plane than the rest of the scene. One has to witness it in motion to be able to see what's going on. An example frame capture to show the lack of fine detail: https://i.imgur.com/SwA0dK2.jpeg (other scenes are a bit better than this)

Then, the encoder is trying very, very hard to eliminate the fine grain in many parts, leaving ugly block artifacts and, through block-based matching, probably adding to the swirling grain phenomenon. Another capture trying to show what's wrong with the encode: https://i.imgur.com/dL901eY.jpeg

nicolas wrote: Wed Aug 28, 2024 9:43 pmI’ll compare the UHD with the included BD.

Curious to hear what you think. To me, the included BD looks so different in detail in grain structure compared to the UHD, the BD master seems to come from a completely different (old 2K?!) restoration. It is identical to the 2019 Kino Lorber BD which claimed to have come from a 4K restoration. In direct comparison, the UHD looks like an improvement to me despite the mentioned grave issues.

mhofmann wrote: Wed Aug 28, 2024 9:59 pm

nicolas wrote: Wed Aug 28, 2024 9:43 pmI’ll compare the UHD with the included BD.

Curious to hear what you think. To me, the included BD looks so different in detail in grain structure compared to the UHD, the BD master seems to come from a completely different (old 2K?!) restoration. It is identical to the 2019 Kino Lorber BD which claimed to have come from a 4K restoration. In direct comparison, the UHD looks like an improvement to me despite the mentioned grave issues.

Great news that the BD is the old one. The 4K restoration KL used for the BD was created by SC and used for their UK Godard Collection from 2016 according to people at BR.com. The new KL UHD master is probably a new restoration and grade, maybe even another scan as they probably would’ve used the old 4K and likely SDR master if the HDR one wasn’t available.

Turbine from Germany release their first titles in the UK through Altitude, just like Capelight. The first UHDs are Barb Wire and Renfield. It’ll be interesting to see if that effectively ends their past collaborations with Arrow.

Finch wrote: Wed Aug 28, 2024 7:10 pm Kino's Alphaville 4K is unfortunately not worth upgrading (he does mention in a follow up post that Marienbad appears to be fine).

I'm not particularly in a rush to get Marienbad, while it's a huge favorite I don't think it seems to be that big of an upgrade over the previous BD, which was admittedly excellent. I was surprised the Melvilles had a pretty substantial jump on their existing discs, as these SC BD->UHD bumps from Kino looked to me like they were taking advantage of some hot sellers, while not overall upgrading their masters too much

nicolas wrote: Wed Aug 28, 2024 10:38 pm Turbine from Germany release their first titles in the UK through Altitude, just like Capelight. The first UHDs are Barb Wire and Renfield. It’ll be interesting to see if that effectively ends their past collaborations with Arrow.

The two titles named here are a very funny punchline to how bizarre this whole DVDBeaver x1000 thing that’s going on in here is.

As I posted elsewhere...

hearthesilence wrote: Sun Mar 17, 2024 6:55 pm I don't want to get my hopes up because unlike King Lear, a NEWER 4K restoration of Alphaville had premiered at MoMA last year (late April) then shown at IFC, so the likelihood of a UHD was much greater once we knew an updated 4K digital master that had yet to see physical release existed.

Prove me wrong KL, please prove me wrong. (And please don't fuck it up if you do.)

Oh well. FWIW, here's what I reported re: the new 4K restoration when I saw it premiere at MoMA:

hearthesilence wrote: Thu Apr 20, 2023 5:22 am I ended up going to the screening, and it was kind of a big deal - it kicked off the Rialto 25 retrospective (even though there was a 35mm screening of Quai des Orfèvres preceding it in the smaller theater 2). Dave Kehr introduced Bruce Goldstein who himself gave an intro (after stating he has a policy that intros should never last more than 5 minutes). Turns out it is indeed a brand-new restoration, and he says it went straight from the lab to MoMA so we were the "first people in the entire universe" to see it. FWIW, he also added that MoMA granted his request to move this screening from theater 2 to theater 1, and he made that request because apparently theater 1 is the ONLY theater from his childhood that still screens movies in NYC. He recalled his father taking him to see the silent version of Robin Hood there with live piano accompaniment, and the art deco exit signs apparently have not changed since then.

I looked at Kino's Blu-ray when I got home, and it's not going to be a precise comparison because the Blu-ray is obviously going to fall short due to the lower resolution and dynamic range. The DCP had a title card that clearly explains the 35mm OCN was restored, then scanned in 4K, and then restored again digitally. The Blu-ray doesn't have any additional info, much less a title card, about the 4K restoration it used, but it's clear it's not as meticulous - lots more specks and dirt, especially in the dark scenes (like when they walk into a room at night and the lights are still off), and I think the new restoration that was screened tonight also stabilized the locked down shots that had some unintentional shakiness.

The new restoration has one more screening scheduled at MoMA, then it will screen sometime in the future at Film Forum, but I'm sure StudioCanal will release it as a UHD. A side-by-side comparison may show that the look is very similar, but removing the blemishes is no small improvement.

I was really hoping for a UHD upgrade, but if it's got problems, it's not like the previous BD was severely lacking.

Last Year at Marienbad is the only one of the four French KL UHDs released this month I’ll be getting I think. I was hoping KL would make the two Melville films digitally available in 4K like they did with Nostalghia, but alas. I’d happily pick them up for a tenner each that way.

hearthesilence wrote: Thu Aug 29, 2024 4:05 am As I posted elsewhere...

hearthesilence wrote: Sun Mar 17, 2024 6:55 pm I don't want to get my hopes up because unlike King Lear, a NEWER 4K restoration of Alphaville had premiered at MoMA last year (late April) then shown at IFC, so the likelihood of a UHD was much greater once we knew an updated 4K digital master that had yet to see physical release existed.

Prove me wrong KL, please prove me wrong. (And please don't fuck it up if you do.)

Oh well. FWIW, here's what I reported re: the new 4K restoration when I saw it premiere at MoMA:

I was really hoping for a UHD upgrade, but if it's got problems, it's not like the previous BD was severely lacking.

Did you by any chance spot the unnatural, magnetic grain movement when you saw the restoration in theaters? This is what plagues re-grained and poorly encoded UHDs, such as The Pianist and many of the bad Paramount discs. If grain was messed with during the mastering stage, it’s present in the DCP and no encoder can get rid of it. KL are candidates to introduce this during the encode, no matter how many bits they throw at the film.

nicolas wrote: Thu Aug 29, 2024 8:28 am Did you by any chance spot the unnatural, magnetic grain movement when you saw the restoration in theaters? This is what plagues re-grained and poorly encoded UHDs, such as The Pianist and many of the bad Paramount discs. If grain was messed with during the mastering stage, it’s present in the DCP and no encoder can get rid of it. KL are candidates to introduce this during the encode, no matter how many bits they throw at the film.

No, and I think I know what you mean because I think I spotted that sort of thing in the new "restored" DCP of Ruby in Paradise and posted about it on this forum.

Am I understanding it correctly that it might be that Paramount's digismear is at least in part an artificial regraining ?

hearthesilence wrote: Thu Aug 29, 2024 9:46 am

nicolas wrote: Thu Aug 29, 2024 8:28 am Did you by any chance spot the unnatural, magnetic grain movement when you saw the restoration in theaters? This is what plagues re-grained and poorly encoded UHDs, such as The Pianist and many of the bad Paramount discs. If grain was messed with during the mastering stage, it’s present in the DCP and no encoder can get rid of it. KL are candidates to introduce this during the encode, no matter how many bits they throw at the film.

No, and I think I know what you mean because I think I spotted that sort of thing in the new "restored" DCP of Ruby in Paradise and posted about it on this forum.

Yes, this is it and as tenia mentioned it’s the DigiSmear look. But thank goodness it’s not in the Alphaville master.

KL’s Sudden Death UHD is now definitely confirmed to be garbage. Terrible encoding (some say grain reduction but I don’t believe this as Peter Hyams is no DNR freak) and very badly clipped audio in 5.1 which should be the film’s OG track. https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php? ... tcount=298. The 2.0 is fine.

nicolas wrote: Mon Sep 02, 2024 4:41 pm KL’s Sudden Death UHD is now definitely confirmed to be garbage. Terrible encoding (some say grain reduction but I don’t believe this as Peter Hyams is no DNR freak) and very badly clipped audio in 5.1 which should be the film’s OG track. https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php? ... tcount=298. The 2.0 is fine.

I guess I'll stick with the old blu ray, a decent off the shelf remaster and enjoy it on a smaller screen.

good that we have forums such as these because the UHD scored very highly on a certain review website.

I'm wondering if any of the good German companies plan to release this?

also curious whether Kino really do have Timecop for 4k as it seems to remain a rumour.

I wouldn’t write it off yet, nicolas hasn’t really explained why it’s garbage. He says it doesn’t have DNR and has good 2.0 audio. He says the presumed original 5.1 is clipped which isn’t great true. But he hasn’t told us yet why the encode is bad. Let’s wait and see first what he says.

Peacock wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2024 9:41 am I wouldn’t write it off yet, nicolas hasn’t really explained why it’s garbage. He says it doesn’t have DNR and has good 2.0 audio. He says the presumed original 5.1 is clipped which isn’t great true. But he hasn’t told us yet why the encode is bad. Let’s wait and see first what he says.

I’ve now received my copy and it’s a mixed bag. I think the restoration and grade is remarkably beautiful and feels perfectly in tune with Hyams’ style. Narrow Margin doesn’t look much different and this is surely intentional. Sudden Death never looked this beautiful. I think the black crush debate isn’t merited as this is clearly graded “artistically” not naturally. The encode is typical for KL - solid to very good in darker scenes (of which this film has many) and not-so-good when it’s brighter. By now I feel like I get the pattern re. when the encode holds up and when it breaks apart and Sudden Death is no different. If grain is thicker and has less high-frequency detail, the encode is good and in these isolated moments even fantastic but as soon as it’s a finer, clearer image and brightness is involved, such as bright white gunfire muzzle, it all collapses. Sometimes within a shot, sometimes one is fine and the other no longer. All in all, solely due to the film largely being set in the darkness, it’s a watchable encode.

Sound is also just as strange. I can’t confirm the clipping for the entirety of the track (another user on BR.com later mentioned that the clipping is only during a loud action scene, which the original poster didn’t mention) but it’s no pleasant 5.1 mix either. It’s active and wide but I couldn’t help feeling that it’s a “processed” mix. I wish I still had the old BD to do a comparison but I believe that KL boosted the LFE levels. An example: Van Damme punches a bad guy near the end and my subwoofer went into overdrive with every punch. Of course, action is exaggerated but not this much. The 2.0 is indeed much better in that way, although it loses the dynamic of the 5.1 and is a more contained mix. For my ears, it’s the better one. Let’s see if Universal does a 4K internationally, until then this will serve me fine.

Sorry for calling the release garbage up front, the impressions on BR.com sounded quite drastic to me.

thanks for the details. I'm definitely not going to the expense and time of importing this film.

re Narrow Margin, I stuck with the 4k remastered blu ray from Koch, sourced from the same as Kino, and apparently with the proper audio track. Looks absolutely stunning.

M Sanderson wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2024 10:57 am thanks for the details. I'm definitely not going to the expense and time of importing this film.

re Narrow Margin, I stuck with the 4k remastered blu ray from Koch, sourced from the same as Kino, and apparently with the proper audio track. Looks absolutely stunning.

This is the first time I’m hearing about audio problems with Narrow Margin. KL just can’t get everything right for one…